The pale grey walls and oval windows of the old hospital dwarfed her swollen frame, and his lean one, as she bent over her knees in a wooden chair and he paced the room at its perimeter. From the outside, the tall, solid wood and brick building perched amongst tall trees and an attractive white porch encircled its entire perimeter. The inside, however, smelled of antiseptic and fresh cotton, and the floors were hard, so every footstep echoed like a tiny explosion in the room. She had spent so many days and months and moments brooding on her guilt, her complacency, but now she felt helpless.
Julia winced and groaned, looking down at her stomach her hands circling its largeness, feeling like the only person there, despite there being roughly 20 women in the room all with the same look of concern, wringing their hands and biting the corners of their lips. She wanted her mother. And then another contraction, the gold of her wedding band glinting in the dusty light of the room.
‘Julia?’ She and Henry looked up and saw them: a man, tall, with glasses that were too small for his round, creamy face, and a nurse with beige, greying hair stood beside him, plain and quiet, both dressed in crisp white and blue uniforms. ‘Please let’s have you come with us now.’ She saw that they noticed the dried blood on her leg as she stood up and she hesitated, looking around the room. She was unsure. Her instinct was to run, without knowing where. Her legs stayed rooted to the floor, her fists clenched. Protect Your Child, a yellowed poster shouted from its place on the wall. Lithiated Soda! and Smart Mums Smoke Camels. None of this made sense to her.
‘Madam?’ But the room smelled of bleach.
‘Julia.’ Her dress had a hole in it.
‘JULIA.’
Henry’s eyes were dark behind the thin curtain of cigarette smoke separating them both. He had been pacing the floor and then leaning against the wall, pausing only to light a cigarette and now snap her back into the room where she sat, confused.
A faint smile flit across her face. ‘Happy Birthday, you know.’
The corner of Henry’s mouth lifted in a wry smile. ‘Thank you for my present. You really know how to surprise me,’ he said, and nodded for her to turn around and get going.
Julia stood and retreated towards the hall, meekly sandwiched in the middle of her two guides in white coats that would possibly be stained with her blood, her breath coming in short bursts to mitigate the pain. Three serious figures walked down a long stretch of polished, hard floor that seemed to split off into thousands of little doors, all hiding private stories narrated by soft voices that weren’t for her to understand. Hers would be the second to last one, a white bed with starched pillows at the head, perching on a metal frame that creaked as she sat on it. Nothing felt comfortable, and then the contractions came again, and she gripped the frame and kneaded the mattress. They held her but she shifted constantly: she crouched and squatted, sat and rocked forward and moaned, bent over the edge of the bed, she climbed on all fours and begged the pain to stop. There were hands gripping her arms to stop her from moving and then she felt them shift her to the bed to lie still with her knees bent; it made her anxious. Something felt too urgent, too heavy. There seemed to be many more figures appearing through the doorway and spreading into the room; hushed voices and heads leaning towards one another in confidence and urgency and then a holding her arm still as she felt a needle in her arm and then saw a mask hovering to be placed over her mouth. And then a wonderful lightness lifted her away and loosened her jaw and the even the skin on her eyelids settled as she listened to pieces of conversation.
‘...breech, they could move more but the heartbeats have slowed…’
‘...a section, possibly avoided, however…’
‘...manual manipulation…?’
‘...no, need her awake, during…’
‘... both heartbeats have stabilized…’
‘Madam, I’m going to go ahead and put my hands inside to reposition the baby, alright?’
Julia nodded, her mind disconnected from their words, and her body disconnected from her. Their mouths and motions became softer and more distant as a medicine seeped into her body and her mind slowed its pace. She felt a vague sense of release in her chest—as if it were cracking open— with a pulling sensation further down, as if her body was spilt neatly in half. The lights were soft, and the faces seemed friendly, and she wanted in that moment to float above it all for a little while, gently brushing against the ceiling and watching the scene below as they moved her limbs and placed their gloved hands inside her. She imagined very vividly that she could then slip through the cracks and lines of broken plaster and float even higher and meet with the vapor of the clouds and the damp branches of the trees embracing the late summer sky. She would see the dust roads of Stratford, and the roar of the Barron Falls, then the bustle of Cairns glittering like a jewel on the edge of the Coral sea, and then the horizon would appear and she would drift farther away until both the sea and sky met in the blackness of night and her world would evaporate entirely and she, like gossamer, would disintegrate, piece by piece.
‘Madam, we need you to push now.’ Their voices were urgent, their hands were on her belly and her legs. Julia stiffened her arms, clasped the sides of her bed as if floating on a raft at sea, and closed her eyes. The remnants of nothingness were still there as she held her breath and
pushed through her chest and back and belly and legs. Her eyes felt wet underneath her lashes. She rested against the pillow. And now again, another push, another two. A breath. And then another, and yet another, and then, her body felt suddenly empty of air and deflated, and a nurse held a small, doughy, white-coated baby covered in blood. She sighed and her back and arms collapsed in exhaustion and back onto the bed.
‘Madam, wait. You’ll need to push again in a second. Here comes the next one, you’re doing very well.’
Another one. ‘Sorry? I’m not sure what you mean.’ Her blue eyes flashed. She was confused. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t understand.’ her voice rose, breathless in alarm, as she’d not anticipated anything but a child, one child, inside her. She looked across to the nurse, the doctor, the faces masked in cotton masks and smiling eyes.
The nurse chuckled and placed a hand on Julia’s thigh. ‘Madam, you’re having twins. Two babies, how incredibly blessed you are! But now we need to help the other one out. Push now.’
She held her breath. Twins.
A whimper caught in her throat, and she closed her eyes, her body aching. Three, two, one, breathe. And again. Her heartbeat was in her ears. And again. Gently, Julia, they reminded. With each space of breath in between, her mind looped from one thought to the next: she wondered what Henry was doing, and if their daughter had gone to bed peacefully, and whether the air smelled of rain and if the orchids had pushed through the soil; she wondered what the world was doing right at this very minute, because it would instantly change in the moments after; the present and past intertwining and colliding in chaos.
The cries sounded the same, like an echo of each other, ripples on water. Julia lay back on the pillow as one of the nurses wiped the blood off her legs and the other held two small bundles. Through the halo of her medicine, she saw two round faces, both the same, and her first worry was that she wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between them. Their skin was like folded dough, like the ‘babka’ her mother used to make for Easter. Twins. She had made two of the same, and although she had been one of five siblings, and Henry was one of three, there had been no twins in either family. This should feel like a blessing, surely? What moments are these, that test the heart.
Julia smiled softly and felt a kind of ache overtaking her as they took them away, snuffling and snorting in the nurse’s arms. Her body lay flat. Dehydrated. Wanting. And who told you to do this, her mother would say, gripping her face with dry, thick hands. Who told you? I chose this, she whispered. This is my redemption.
Darkness settled on the empty room, the ping of machines accompanying the distant rattle of metal trays and soft voices and
curtains being opened and closed on the stories held within the halls. Footsteps clicked upon the thin tile floors, louder with each step towards her room and white figures stood in her doorway and filtered away as she drifted off to sleep.
The next day, Henry stopped in to see Julia, as he wasn’t allowed the night before, as Julia was in recovery and asleep.
‘Madam, your husband is here to see you.’ A nurse opened the door carrying two bundles in each arm and handed them to Julia as Henry approached. The room felt instantly warmer.
‘They told me. I can’t believe it. Twins. A boy and a girl.’ He walked over softly, smiling, his eyes creasing as he approached the bed to look down at the little faces scrunched under tiny knitted hats. ‘Oh, Julia. I honestly don’t know what to say. It’s a little bit terrifying and wonderful.’
‘I know.’ She watched as he reached for them and she placed each delicately in his arms. ‘But you have a son.’ Her heart beat swiftly at the thought of a child in the image of Henry.
‘What a life, eh?’ He leaned his head back with a throaty laugh, his eyes wet and shining.
‘Well, God has blessed us with a large family. Maybe a bit larger than we expected.’
He chuckled softly. ‘God has a strange sense of humor, that’s for sure. For years, nothing and now this.’ He swayed back and forth as the babies gurgled in his arms, their mouths searching. ‘What do you think about names?’
‘What about Lesia? And Maksim?’
Henry squinted, pausing to think. ‘Lesia, from God. And Maksim. A leader. A strong son of mine.’ He nodded and smiled, kissing the doughy faces. ‘Yes.’
‘Henry, we have three healthy children now. Three. And look at the heartache that we’d had so long ago.’ A surge of positivity and adrenaline coursed through her.
Henry placed them back in her arms and watched as she settled them and began to feed.
‘Julia, I need to get back to work.’ He kissed her softly on the forehead and walked a few steps, and then turned, looking at Julia for a moment. He tapped his chest pocket and retrieved a cigarette, a sigh escaping his lips.
Julia wondered, then, if she could ever tell him, but he looked happy, and she realized that he could be happy. They could be.
And then he walked through the door with the grace of a breeze.
18
August 1952
Two years rolled on without consequence as the family adjusted to the newness. The days, hours, weeks, minutes and months passed in an intangible recklessness and a delicious fever. Henry would come home and read to the twins nightly, as they curled up against his body in the small bed, their tiny hands and feet exploring his shirt, listening to his voice resonate. It was all a heady mix that Julia loved and felt consumed by, and it diminished much of her guilt.
Their lives had changed and stayed the same, equally, though Julia’s relationship with Elina was now colored with a cool distance. Julia buried her secret in the deepest recesses of her mind, but every time she saw Elina, or Iliya, and pretended that life was as it should be, and they all moved around each other at polite dinners and smiled greetings, she grieved the loss of that friendship. Elina, for her part, graciously stepped back, assuming that Julia was overwhelmed with the twins. But she suspected something was amiss, and she observed from a distance, for a time.
By the following summer, Lesia’s hair had grown thick and fast: it was a shade darker than Slava’s, like a dimmed sunbeam, and it was soft, clinging in short, shining whisps to her neck, not long enough to be blown too wild by the wind. She had a small round birthmark next to her lip, and it was as dark her eyes: an almost black brown that contrasted beautifully with her light hair. Maksim’s hair was dark and thick and was the color of milky chocolate; Julia would routinely run her fingers through it as she fed him, looking as his eyes slowly changed from the blue at birth. Julia wondered if they’d be hazel, like her sister’s had been. Whilst Lesia was lean, Maksim was wide, and his head was large. Lesia needed constant affection, where her brother eschewed it. Lesia cried out to be held most of the day, whilst Maksim was observant and still.
They played constantly and their laughter had become her music, and Julia covered them constantly with affection, peppering their faces and their hands with kisses. Their life together simmered with abandon and hope, and Julia fully claimed them as her own and felt that nothing had, or would, come between them; her heart swelled as the marks of her pain faded and she held their warm bodies to her own. She healed in her love for them.
Henry was working more than usual, and he had told Julia of his thoughts on Sydney, but in her focused bliss and exhaustion as a new mother she had placed that in the recesses of her mind. The air between them, the four walls that surrounded them, felt safe, and the burdens that Henry had carried before were released from his shoulders and he carried the love of his children as the grateful father he was. It felt like the patterns in their behavior had found a happy rhythm, and so Julia indulged in the new life that had been thrust upon them. She had started taking Slava to a small school in Stratford a few times a week, now that she was older, which left the days for her to spend with the twins.
This morning, she’d been at the park with them, after dropping off Slava at a local play school. The day was clear, and it bled its peacefulness into the afternoon. She took out a book that she had found at home and brought with her: it was her accountancy and mathematics book, with a pale blue cover, and had survived the years-long journey from her school days. These were two classes that Julia had excelled in. She remembered the classroom as white, bare walls, shining wood floors, windows with limited views and that caked with snow in the winter. She remembered sitting across from her best friend, Sofia, and remembered her hair: always in a sharp bun, a white ribbon tied around it.
She thumbed a cracked yellowed page: the ink had faded almost completely, scrawled in a hurried hand:
Started business-- capital 100,000
Capital (100,000) + Liabilities (0) = Assets (cash = 100,000)
Bought furniture 25, 000
Solution?
Capital (100,000) + Liabilities (0) = Assets (Cash = 75,000 + Furniture = 25,000)
Bought goods for cash 20, 000
Capital (100, 000) + Liabilities (0) = Assets (Cash = 55,000 + Furniture = 25,000 + Goods = 20,000
Brought goods from Mr. Nelson on credit $5,000
Solution???
Capital (100, 000) + Liabilities (Nelson = 5,000) = Assets (Cash = 55,000 + Furniture = 25,000 + Goods = 25,000
She remembered she had once seen an accounting machine; the teacher had brought it to show the class. It fascinated her: it was like a strange, heavy stony grey beast sat atop the main desk, spattered with seemingly hundreds of pale-colored keys, uniformly spaced apart. It had purpose. She liked that it had purpose. It made her want to have purpose. She smiled, closing the book. It felt good to see the parts of her that had been hidden for so long.
Along the river there was a small gazebo that had been built before the war: it was a cream-colored hexagonal structure with slim pieces of wood laced together and all converging into a pointed roof. There were small benches on each of the six sides within and was big enough to hold groups of people relaxing by the river and taking in the view. Occasionally, there was a wedding party that took pictures there, and Julia always liked seeing a gathering like that, for the dresses alone.
It was there today, on one of the benches, that she saw him, though she wasn’t sure at first, and then wondered if it actually was, or if it was her imagination that was reeling. And then she looked again, and confirmed that it was, and saw him smoking with a few friends, sitting in the same languid pose that she remembered, arm draped on the back of someone’s shoulders. There were two women with him, dressed nicely, and three other men. They had probably been out to lunch, or perhaps were just setting off somewhere. Julia looked away, aware that she’d been staring, and turned her attention back onto the twins. She watched them distractedly, o
nly half paying attention as they sat at her feet. She turned again to look, and she regretted it instantly, for Iliya saw her, trapped her gaze, and waved. She watched as he turned back to his group, motioned that he would be right back to them and started walking over, and Julia cursed that she’d even looked, and wondered how quickly she could leave without creating any drama.
‘Well! Look who it is…’ he smiled as he approached, nothing remarkable about his face, just incredibly familiar. ‘Can I sit down? Is it just you?’ The strength in the knowledge of what he had done, and that she would never admit to what had happened to her, emanated in a kind of smugness that could easily be mistaken as confidence. He had that power, and they both knew it.
‘No. Please go away.’ She stumbled over her words and tried to stifle the urge to scream or run, she couldn’t decide which.
He crouched down next to her and rested his arms on his thighs. ‘I'm about to go off to lunch with a few friends, but I thought I’d say hello.’ He looked over to the group. They had been casually watching them. He waved. ‘Henry probably knows them, some of the men worked with him. We’re waiting for Elina to join us. How’s the family?’
She wasn’t looking at him, so he had a few indulgent moments to scan the side of her face; her hair was plaited loosely and hung down her neck, the buttons of her dress were silvery and neat, all done up and containing her modesty. Her wool coat that had always been too big now perched on her shoulders delicately, like a cape. She turned to him, breaking his gaze. ‘Please leave me alone.’ Her cheeks were crimson, and he leaned into her, and from afar, someone could say that these two people looked extremely comfortable in each other’s presence.
Lesia toddled up, found Julia’s leg and clung to it, her lips wet on her knee. Maksim was sitting next to her and started whimpering for a feed.
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